How do I find out about concerts? How do I get more details about something I heard over the air? How do I submit events to WORT’s Music Calendars? Who do I contact with changes or cancellations?

WORT’s Music Calendars are a great resource to find out about concerts in all genres and places. Usually you’ll find details in the online listing or links to get more information. There’s a link to to submit your event at the top of the calendar page. You can also submit events, changes and cancellations to calendar@wortfm.org.

Contact Information

Music Director: Sybil Augustine – musicdirector@wortfm.org (for music submissions, charts and tracking, promotional exchanges for music events and following up on volunteer applications or other requests. Please include specifics in your subject line, such as “Hiphop Music Submission” etc, )

How do I get my music played on WORT?

We accept submissions in most genres and styles of music, focusing on noncommercial, out-of-the-mainstream, independent releases (check out our playlists and music charts for more information.) It may take up to a few weeks for us to review and process your submission so we appreciate your patience, and feel free to contact us to follow up. Please send your music, indicating any tracks with language that needs to be aired after 10 pm and including a one-sheet description and any biographical and tour information, to WORT Music Director, 118 S. Bedford St, Madison, WI 53703 and/or to musicdirector@wortfm.org.

We do accept digital files on .wav or mp3, but currently we still prefer CDs to digital submissions because it’s the quickest way to get it into the hands of our programmers and onto the airwaves, though we have a growing digital library. Digital submissions should be .wav or other lossless files, or high quality mp3s [128-320 kbps.]

You can follow up or “track” your submissions by email, or call 608-256-2001 on Wednesdays between 1-4 pm CST to ask if we received it, has it been reviewed, has it been added to our library, and what kind of airplay it’s getting—e.g. light, medium, heavy or charting. Thanks and we look forward to hearing your music!

WORT Music Playlists

What was that song I heard? Who was the artist, what is the album title, where can I get it? Where can I find the entire playlist for a show?

Click on the Playlists button to bring up a calendar where you can choose any date to find the playlists for that day. If you can’t find the right playlist or the song you’re looking for, your best bet is to call the station the next time that program’s on and ask the host yourself. If that’s not possible we may be able to help you, but please have as much information as possible at hand when you contact us, such as: approximate day and time the music was played, what type or genre of music it was, who hosted the show and any other information you remember about the selection and we’ll do our best to track it down.

Once you figure it out, there’s a “Buy It!” link next to each track in online playlists that leads you to a place where you can buy songs and albums, and by doing it that way a small portion of each purchase goes to support WORT.

Rachal Duggan’s universe of doodles

If you’ve looked at Tone Madison any time in the past year, you’veprobablyseen the artwork of Rachal Duggan. Her illustrations are almost always black-and-white line drawings. They’ve appeared in publications including the Chicago Reader, Our Lives Magazine, ThePitchfork Review, and Isthmus. She can often be seen at live events, doing custom live portraits of people’s butts and selling such inspired items as her Jon Hamm dong tote.

What I love about Duggan’s work is that she can use that really simple approach to encapsulate so much. Sometimes it’s playful. Sometimes it’s defiant. And sometimes it just is because it is. One of my favorite Duggan works is called “jazzy shrimps,” and it just shows a couple of little shrimps in hats, playing bongos and a saxophone. It reflects a style she’s developed over the years, bucking her own doubts and a lot of advice.

“I’ve had a lot of people tell me that I shouldn’t do what I do,” Duggan says. “Saying, ‘You’re never gonna get work doing black and white, that you should put color in everything, that you shouldn’t draw things that might be offensive to people, have a point of view or a political perspective.'”

Duggan’s approach to live drawing, at events including craft fairs and pop-ups, reflects the same mischievous spirit. One of her live-drawing offerings is the “butt portrait”—literally just drawing a quick sketch of an individual or couple’s butts. Some people recoil from the intimacy of this, but it’s surprisingly popular.

“As soon as I did it, it was kind of a freeing experience, because whatever I drew, I was going to hand to the people and say ‘Thank you very much,’ and they would walk away,” Duggan says. “It’s a lot easier to draw butts than to draw faces. Have I seen different kind of butts that I’m like, how do I draw this? Yes!”

Duggan moved to Madison from Chicago a little over a year ago and she’s already created a strong presence here. During January and February, she’s an artist-in-residence at the Madison Public Library’s Bubbler space, located on the first floor of the downtown central library. She’s already populated the space with drawings of her own, many of them on the windows of the library, but she’s also experimenting with ways to encourage community members to do some doodling of their own, with a series of workshops and open drawing sessions.

I met with Duggan at the Bubbler space to talk about her art and what it’s like to go from working at home to running a really interactive residency.